Hamas says videos reveal PA collaborators who helped Israel kill resistance fighters

Hamas on Saturday released a series of videos which it says contain confessions by agents working for the Palestinian Authority who passed information to Israel that was used to attack the Gaza Strip.

In at least one case, Hamas says that information a collaborator passed to his PA handler was used by Israel to target and kill one of its members.

One of the videos contains what Hamas says are confessions from PA officers that they were behind a recent series of car burnings that were intended to sow chaos and instability in Gaza.

The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah has dismissed the Hamas claims.

Confessions of a collaborator?

One video shows a person who is described as “one of the spies collaborating with the Preventive Security who was arrested due to his suspicious behavior of monitoring resistance fighters” during last summer’s Israeli assault on Gaza.

The Preventive Security is one of the intelligence agencies of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas.

The man’s face is obscured and his name is not given in order to protect his family, the video states.

There is an enormous stigma attached to having a family member accused of collaboration in tight-knit Gaza, as in other occupied territories throughout history.

(In August, in the midst of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, Hamas executed a number of individuals it said were collaborators, prompting condemnation from local and international human rights organizations.)

The unnamed suspect does however name his handler as Preventive Security officer Ahmad Abd al-Halim Abu Shawqa.

“Ahmad [Abu Shawqa] got in touch with me during the war,” the suspect says. “He used to ask me for information about where rockets were being launched from.” He adds that he was asked to look out for weapons, especially rockets and anti-aircraft missiles.

The man also says he was asked about who frequented the local mosque and to find out who had recently been recruited into the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas.

He says that he passed on information about one Abdallah Arafat Eid Shamaligh, a resident of the Sheikh Ajlin district of Gaza.

According to the video, Shamaligh, a 37-year-old father of five who was a member of the Qassam Brigades, “was killed after he was informed on by this spy.”

The video claims that Hamas was able to match many instances of information accused collaborators say they provided their handlers with actual Israeli attacks. more

Comments

'Coronavirus-free' Gaza prepares for the worst

Until now, the besieged Gaza Strip has stayed free of the novel coronavirus spreading across the world. As the Gaza Strip has been under a stringent Israeli-led blockade for nearly 13 years, the spread of the coronavirus - officially known as COVID-19 - has become the topic of discussion for many Palestinians, with some joking that the blockade was preventing them from being exposed.But as authorities in the coastal Palestinian enclave gear up to contain any potential outbreak, serious questions have arisen about the risks and implications of such a scenario. But given its already difficult humanitarian situation and high population density, an outbreak in the Gaza Strip could prove to be catastrophic, health officials have warned. "If the virus enters Gaza and spreads, it will get out of hand," Gaza Ministry of Health spokesperson Majdi Thuhair told Middle East Eye, as he explained that a severe shortage of resources and personnel would make it near impossible

Boycott of New York diamond dealer launched to protest settlement construction

Members of Adalah NY call for boycott of Leviev for its crimes against Palestinians and South Africans New York, NY, May 9 – On the day before Mother’s Day, 40 New York human rights advocates gathered at the Leviev jewelry store on Madison Avenue and called on throngs of weekend Madison Avenue shoppers to boycott Israeli diamond mogul Lev Leviev over his companies’ construction of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in West Bank villages including Bil’in and Jayyous. Mother’s Day is one of the biggest jewelry shopping periods in the US annually. The New York protest came as controversy is growing in Norway over Norwegian government investments in Leviev’s company Africa-Israel . The New York protesters also commemorated Bassem Abu Rahma from Bil’in who was shot to death by Israeli soldiers last month during a peaceful protest against the construction on Bil’in’s land of Israel’s wall and of the Mattityahu East settlement by a Leviev company. Thanks to vivapalestina.us (not co

Support striking Palestinian quarry workers demanding their rights from Israeli employer

On 16 June, 35 Palestinian workers at Salit Quarries in Mishor Adumim (in area C, east of Jerusalem, in the Occupied West Bank) began a strike. The workers, organized with the independent union WAC-Ma'an, are demanding an end to exploitation and humiliation, and insist on signing a first collective agreement. Salit Quarries’ main customer is Readymix Industries (Israel). The total reliance of Salit Quarry on Readymix as their biggest and by far the most important customer puts responsibility on Readymix to make sure that their clients abides by labour laws and safeguards elementary rights for the workers of Salit. We call upon Readymix to urge the Salit management to terminate this unnecessary strike by signing the collective agreement with the workers and WAC-Ma’an. Click this protest link to send your message. The text of the message is as follows: I write to you to express my grave concern about the failure of Salit management to sign a collective agreement with the workers of

Search iGaza